Do Women Talk More Than Men?
Ah, yes, the ages old quip about talkative ladies. Drawing the ire of many a woman and the insipid chuckles of many a bro in a popped-collared polo, this is one of those annoying questions you may already have assumed to know the answer to, but that I felt merited addressing anyway: do women talk more than men?
Turns out, many researchers have looked into whether or not this is in fact true. Many of these researchers are actually semi-credible, too, but most of them are, sadly not. The tl;dr here is, not shockingly, yes, probably. But, only by the tiniest amount and not nearly under all circumstances. Unfortunately, when it comes to studying gender tendencies we are back to yet another one of those sciencey things in which every study seems to show something different and nobody is happy with anything.
Some of the more credible evidence suggests that talkativeness has to do with the Foxp2 gene, which has a lot to do with the childhood development of speech and language. Women seem to have a bit more of this stuff in their systems than men do, which leads to the possibility that it could impact their range of vocabulary, the age at which girls start to speak, and a bunch of other stuff I’m not going to get in because genetics is hard and this is a “mini-article“.1
It should be noted though, that while women may have slightly more of this gene, these studies in particular concluded that there is virtually no difference in whether women talk more than men, and come down pretty hard on this hypothesis. Other studies contradict those studies, naturally.
Another idea is that it has everything to do with social conditioning. The chatty, emotionally literate woman who expresses herself and communicates with her partner or friends, the gracious hostess in a 1950s pinup dress, the fashionista at the mall with her girlfriends, or “traditional” career norms that often placed women as teachers, secretaries, and other “answerers of phones.” This is all contrasted against the the cultural stereotype of the “tall, dark and handsome” guy who internalizes his feelings and only speaks when he has a clever one-liner. You know, like in every movie ever.
Also, sexism!
Most studies I discovered, unfortunately, used disappointingly small sample sizes across the board, but they seemed to come to relatively similar conclusions. Women are chattier in smaller groups, and perhaps slightly more overall. But, when the number of people tops 7, men suddenly surge forward to take control. Because of course we do. What social gatherings consist of more than 7 people? Work, mostly.2 Men also seem to talk a bit more in classroom settings.
In social settings such as lunch breaks with colleagues, parties, or similar, women led the way by a wider margin, however.
While generally non-verbal, this can be seen clearly on social media as well. My own findings in follower engagement both on this site and on Facebook in particular show that while I have vastly more female followers across all platforms, they engage considerably less than male followers. I believe this is likely due to social factors, fear of being shouted down or talked over, and the other, usual issues that women face every time they open their mouths.
There’s probably a lot more that goes into all of this, but suffice it to say that the ultimate takeaway should be that yes, women speak very slightly more, on average, but that the difference is pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things and we should probably all stop being dicks about it.
It should also be mentioned that essentially all of these studies appear to have focused on native English speakers, primarily in the United States. As the ways in which we act and interact are bound closely to our cultures, it should be safe to say that other languages and their speakers almost definitely will show different results.
These results can be influenced by factors such as the way women operate in the workforce: are they given more or fewer opportunities for career advancement? Are they expected to be baby factories to the same extent as in other cultures? Basically, it’s about however society views women and how it affects their ability to have social interactions.
There is one huge point to women here, though: Ladies seem way more interested in learning languages. My largest reader and social media follower demographic is millennial women between 24 and 35, followed by women between 18 and 23, and the gap between female followers and male followers3 only widens each year. Right now it’s something like 65:35.
So that’s nice.
This mini-post originally appeared as a separate segment contained within my larger article “How Many Words Will You Speak in a Lifetime.“
Apex-editor of Languages Around the Globe, collector of linguists, regaler of history, accidental emmigrant, serial dork and English language mercenary and solutions fabricator. Potentially a necromancer. All typos are my own.
